I know the place of the Gandhi cap, which most of us have been wearing for the last thirty years, have respect for it, but do not make a fetish of it. What is more important is not the cap, but what is beneath it. I want not the cap, but brains…. I want brains; I want khadi cap-wearers to think.Mr Shastri has also suggested that now there is no need to say that the active members of the Congress will have nothing to do with communalism. Mr Algurai Shastri, giving the analogy of a tadpole, has said that the tadpole in course of time loses its tail and becomes a frog. He wants to convince members thereby that the question of communalism is like the tadpole’s tail, which has fallen off now and has no longer any importance.The Congress, therefore, according to Mr Shastri, should dispense with this talk of Congressmen being not communal. Now there is no need to say that the active members of the Congress would have nothing to do with communalism.I was completely amazed by this suggestion of Mr Shastri. As far as I am concerned, I consider communal unity as the very plank on which the Congress stands. All my life I have cherished this principle of the Congress and if any Congressman dare say that it can be dispensed with, I will face him and fight it out. I declare here and now that if, even by a single hairbreadth, it is sought at any time to deviate from this principle of communal unity, it becomes my duty and yours to fight this tendency.The Congress is not an institution which we want for its own sake. The Congress is a means of serving the people. The day it becomes an institution in itself, I will be the first person to say that the Congress should be wound up. In that case, the Congress should be wound up gracefully and not allowed to be degraded.The country faces big problems which can only be solved when the right approach is made not only to them, but to the Congress organisation through which we are going to solve them. I am in favour of the membership being one rupee. Congressmen should search their hearts and find out whether the people who support the Congress cannot pay this sum. People as a rule spend money on so many things, many of them wasteful. I will not say that in this poor country everybody is in a position to pay one rupee as subscription. If there is a little inconvenience, let it be there. It is all to the good. It will make a Congress supporter feel his responsibility towards his organisation.
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